And we give them money. (Or, more accurately, we borrow money from the Chinese and then pass it on to the Egyptians.)

Especially galling is when the cleric prays, “Oh Allah, disperse them, rend them asunder.” After a Jewish diaspora of nearly two millenia that culminated in the Holocaust, how could any decent and educated man pray for this? And to see President Morsi, on his knees, brow furrowed, concentrating and earnestly wishing this fate upon the Jews, is stomach churning.

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UPDATE: The original video has been taken down from YouTube, and I can’t locate a substitute, but here’s a link to the Washington Post reporting on the incident, and a quote from the Post’s article:

In one of the prayers, the cleric asked God to “destroy the Jews and their supporters and disperse them, rend them asunder.” Morsi is then seen continuing to say Amen. The prayers were aired on state TV and caught on video by MEMRI, a pro-Israel media monitoring group.

And here’s the public photo (weirdly released by the Egyptian government) of Morsi praying in the mosque where the antisemitic prayer occurred:

Imagine, back in 1924, Egypt’s first full year as a sovereign state, the country’s Minister of Finance was a man called Joseph Cattaui (Pasha), a Member of Parliament and a Jew.
Try to picture that now: a Jew serving as an Arab Muslim nation’s Finance Minister – or even getting elected as an obscure backbench MP. Evidently, history doesn’t always move in the direction of “Western” progress.

I think we have to try to understand a couple of things here even though it is difficult. We need to realize that all countries are not the United States or Europe and not every where wants to be. And second, Morsi is in a difficult spot trying to hold Egypt together while trying to make nice to the West. A lot of people in the Brotherhood are trying to make Egypt more fundamentalist while people who depend on tourists for a living what to go the other way. Difficult to see where this will all end up. It is not a good thing, however, that he is praying for distruction of the hand that feeds both sides – Israel and Egypt.

I agree with you that it is “difficult to see where this will end up” and that we shouldn’t be fast to conclude that Egypt will become more like Iran than Turkey over the next decade. And I understand that cultural differences, however appalling to us, can function as static to a larger story: a movement toward general progress (“two steps forward, one step back”).

But I don’t read this incident that way. When an entire culture can speak this way without blinking at its grotesqueness, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Obviously, we have to stay engaged with Egypt, but we should do so with eyes wide open, and make no excuses for them.

Your linking of Israeli aid to Egyptian aid is an especially noxious observation because it suggests that we’re engaged with Israel to keep them from becoming our enemies. Modern Israel and the United States share a common inheritance–the West and the Enlightenment–and it’s worth defending. Outside of Israel, there are not more Jews located anywhere–except in the United States. The Israelis are in a terrible position, they are our allies, and they are dependent on us in the way that Western Europe was during its standoff with the Soviet Union.

I didn’t mean to “link Israeli aid to Egyptian aid” as you interpreted. I simply meant we give both vast amounts of money. And we have seen an anti-Brotherhood demonstration already in Egypt. And Israel is certainly worth our aid for many reasons including historical ones.

But I am not an apologist for either side. I think the Israeli government is totally wrong on the settlement issue and Egypt would be totally wrong to move toward an Islamic state. Neither is perfect, but then neither are we.

So now, you realize that Egypt is not on its way to democracy and freedom, as some conservatives have warned more than a year ago. Obama claimed that his foreign policy made sure Egypt would become a democracy. He was either very ignorant of the situation or he was lying. All liberals agreed with Obama and said the US has to make Mubarack step down and intervene militarily, if needed, like bombing Lybia. There were many who warned that we should not get involved and that instead of freedom, those countries will become radical Islamic theocracies. But the media dismissed the warnings and tried to portray the Muslim Brotherhood as a group open to dialogue. Obama’s spokesperson said in a press conference at the White House that the Muslim Brotherhood is “largely secular”. That was a lie, anybody knows it.

Don’t be surprised that Egypt’s president is so fanatical and hostile to us and Israel. He also wants to exterminate Egypt’s Christians once and for all. It was to be expected. He’s the product of the Muslim Brotherhood’s theocratic political mentality.

The politically correct leftist liberals attack the Bible for phrases where it says “the Jews tried to kill Jesus”, but they never seem to be concerned about statements in the Koran which refer to Jews as “pigs and apes”.

As far as praying, this is a good time for you Santi and many agnostic multicultural liberals to ask themselves, how can the West still believe that Muslims worship the same God as Christians and Jews?

Speaking of the heritage we share with Israel, you forgot to mention the Bible. I know you don’t like that, but it’s the truth. In fact, we wouldn’t know anything or very little about the ancient history of the Jews if it wasn’t for the Bible.

Shut the hell up you racist fuck, get an education before kissing Israel’s ass, you share no heritage with them, if you educated yourself you would notice just how similar Jewdeism is to Islam, the pigs and apes quote from the Quran refers to a particular small group of Jewish criminals from mecca who were involved in a war there. The qur’an condemns violence against Jews and christians very clearly, no matter what any tells you, sheikh or otherwise, most Sunni Muslims don’t follow a religious leader, there is no pope etc. Ayatollah is a Shia thing and don’t really know much about him.
The Muslim brotherhood isn’t some Islamic terrorist group, and who Egyptians pick as their president is there choice, it’s a democracy now. There is nothing wrong with islamists to us you idiot, if you think otherwise great but no one cares what you think anyway. If egyptians like it than that’s all that matters, to a previous comment, no Morsi does not want to kill all Copts (or Jews) you idiot, he’s not retarted.